Ott and Aoki offer a poignant critique of the media
coverage surrounding the horrific beating and subsequent death of Matthew
Shepard, demonstrating both the constitutive and transformative potential
of symbolic forms. Their compelling essay productively advances Kenneth
Burke’s theories of symbolic action, terministic frames, and the comic
corrective. The authors argue that the mass media’s tragic framing of Shepard’s
death was the driving force behind the public vilification process that
transformed Shepard’s murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson,
into convenient scapegoats, thus alleviating a sense of collective guilt
and responsibility for our individual participation in a homophobic society. The
vilification process becomes clear through the authors’ careful attention
to the changing news coverage between Shepard’s death and McKinney’s trial. As
Ott and Aoki write, "in the first few days after the attack, the public
was forced, if only temporarily, to confess the prevalence of homophobic
attitudes across the country" (491). That is, Shepard’s death directly
confronted Americans with its homophobia—what had become the last socially
acceptable prejudice.

Initially, the public anguish over the murder led to
renewed debates over the importance of instating hate crime legislation. However,
as time passed, "Slowly, almost unnoticeably, discourse in the news media
was shifting from the country’s homophobia to that of the perpetrators,
where it was being recoded as a character flaw rather than a wide-scale
institutional prejudice" (492). As the trial approached, McKinney and
Henderson were symbolically transformed. At first, they were two men with
whom we might identify and recognize, but now they were dehumanized as
isolated villains: they became "two very sick and twisted people" rather
than men who could have lived next door (492). This mediated transformation
and dehumanization created a symbolic distance between the public and the
killers; we could no longer find identification with these villains and
were relieved of any social culpability. While the actual trial may have
served as a sense of social closure in the public mourning of Matthew Shepard,
Ott and Aoki argue that the media coverage of the killers fostered an overly
simplistic symbolic resolution to the story, reinforcing a heterosexist
order and eliminating "the self-reflective space that might serve as the
basis for social and political change" (494).

Beyond simply demonstrating the tragic frame of the
murder and the problematic social implications, the authors also provide
that very self-reflective space the media lacks in their indictment. Perhaps
the most notable aspect of this essay is its productive capacity in re-constituting
the public as critically reflective participants in the social order. Advocating
Burke’s notion of the comic frame, the authors call for momentum in the
direction of maximum consciousness—"self-awareness and social responsibility
at the same time" (497). Rather than merely rejecting the media coverage
with an attitude of pure debunking, they present productive and socially
responsible critique, prompting a unique sense of critical reflection in
the reader. The authors demonstrate their own constitutive and transformative
potential – you cannot walk away from this article unmoved.

Ott and Aoki’s politically charged analysis thoughtfully
engages theoretical concepts in ways that welcome the newcomer to Burke
while remaining provocative to those thoroughly-versed in Burkean perspectives. This
essay exemplifies Burke’s relevance to contemporary social relations, yet
it leaves room for further elaboration. For example, the authors do gesture
to the ideological implications embedded in dramatic forms, yet miss an
opportunity to explore the value of Burke for theories of hegemony. The
dehumanization process which transformed the killers from knowable subjects
to incomprehensible monsters represents a complex hegemonic absorption
technique of violation and repair that calls for further exploration.